Air Quality — Toggle Raw Values (Hourly/24h Average) and Support Localised Indexes for Air Quality Stations
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Hi Windy Team,
I am a regular user in British Columbia, Canada, where tracking PM2.5 and atmospheric smoke during wildfire season is critical. I have an account and use the app heavily, but the current implementation of the Air Quality Stations layer is frustrating for non-US users due to forced indexing.
Currently, when viewing a government monitoring station (like Vernon Science Centre, BC), the bubble displays a unitless number based strictly on the US EPA AQI formula.
This causes significant confusion outside the US. Furthermore, the station bubbles often reflect instantaneous spikes rather than standardized averages, which is not representative of true environmental air quality criteria.
I would like to propose a few high-utility upgrades to the Air Quality Station data layer:
- A Toggle for "Raw Mass Concentration" (Hourly & 24h Average)
Instead of forcing the US EPA AQI calculation globally, please give us a setting to display the raw physical metric mass concentration on the map bubbles (e.g., µg/m³ for PM2.5/PM10 and ppb for Ozone).
Critically, please allow us to choose the integration time step: either the 1-hour current reading or a 24-hour rolling average. Government air quality criteria and health standards globally are strictly indexed against 24-hour averages, whereas commercial sensors often output highly volatile, instantaneous multi-minute spikes.
- Stop Hiding Secondary Pollutants on the Station Card
Right now, the map bubble displays the "worst-case" index of a multi-pollutant station (e.g., a bubble shows "27" driven by Ozone), but if the user has the PM2.5 map layer active, the pop-up data card only shows the PM2.5 breakout.
Please allow the station card to expand and show all reported contaminants (PM2.5, PM10, O3, NO2) simultaneously so we can see exactly what is driving the overall station value.
- Country-Specific Index Toggles (Optional Bonus)
For users who prefer indexes over raw data, it would be incredibly helpful if Windy could dynamically toggle to local regional indexes based on geography or user settings, such as Canada’s Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) scale of 1–10+.
Allowing us to view raw, averaged hourly or daily mass numbers would bring the station layers into perfect alignment with how your excellent CAMS and ECMWF forecast layers already display raw mass data.
Thank you for considering this upgrade to an already fantastic app!
- A Toggle for "Raw Mass Concentration" (Hourly & 24h Average)
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I completely agree with this suggestion. The current AQI approach works well for users familiar with the US EPA system, but it creates unnecessary confusion in regions where different standards are used. During wildfire season in Canada, raw PM2.5 values and 24-hour averages are often much more meaningful than a single index number. Having a toggle between raw concentrations, hourly readings and rolling averages would make the layer much more useful for both professionals and regular users. Showing all available pollutants in the station card would also improve transparency, especially when the displayed index is driven by something other than the selected pollutant. Localized indexes would be a great addition too. These changes would make the air quality layer more globally relevant.
